Steve Jobs + Obama + John Chambers

David Wiegel talks about an excerpt from the Steve Jobs book, but the meat is really in the comment section (!):

Jobs went on to urge that a way be found to train more American engineers. Apple had 700,000 factory workers employed in China, he said, and that was because it needed 30,000 engineers on-site to support those workers. "You can’t find that many in America to hire", he said. These factory engineers did not have to be PhDs or geniuses; they simply needed to have basic engineering skills for manufacturing. Tech schools, community colleges, or trade schools could train them. "If you could educate these engineers," he said, "we could move more manufacturing plants here." The argument made a strong impression on the president. Two or three times over the next month he told his aides, "We’ve got to find ways to train those 30,000 manufacturing engineers that Jobs told us about."

Maybe this is something the government can help with--- maybe not. But at least it emphasizes something that could actually be good for the U.S. Contrast John Chambers of Cisco:

Jobs, sitting next to the president, kicked off the dinner by saying, "Regardless of our political persuasions, I want you to know that we’re here to do whatever you ask to help our country." Despite that, the dinner initially became a litany of suggestions of what the president could do for the businesses there. Chambers, for example, pushed a proposal for a repatriation tax holiday that would allow major corporations to avoid tax payments on overseas profits if they brought them back to the United States for investment during a certain period. The president was annoyed, and so was Zuckerberg, who turned to Valerie Jarrett, sitting to his right, and whispered, "We should be talking about what’s important to the country. Why is he just talking about what’s good for him?"

Man, if Zuckerberg calls you out for being too egocentric, you've crossed a line.